The novel and its designs.

Starting a novel is the easiest thing to do. Finishing is something quite else. Getting it published another matter still. Finally bringing the beloved reader to open the pages and READ. Now that needs a miracle these days, as everyone is so distracted. I was told, and I am repeating myself here, never write about writers. However, I find all those novels that have writers as focalizers or characters, to have that little extra attraction, like chili in tomato soup. I think the reason behind this attraction, is the feeling a writer's presence will provide an additional level. We become aware of the writing process, and can enjoy this in tandem with the story. The old metanarrative line. Of course, when the writer ODs on writing, then it takes you away from the READING. Those two Barthian elements, the writable and the readable are definitely palpable. When I start a novel ( I have started so many that it is like trying to jumpstart an old Vauxhall Viva in the midst of Winter), I generally have a design in mind. Maybe I become overwhelmed by the architecture - certainly in the case of New Cynics a novel that was a palimpseste on top of the original Cynics novel (one that is a work of genius) by Anatole Mariengoff. I started with a metaphor of Russia of the past as being like an unmade bed as to bridge the cynics of the NEP and my new cynics of the 1990's. The bed and its contours represented the geography of Russia, and then the focus shifted to the stains of lovemaking, to the visceral presence of the two principals, Vladimir and Olga. The novel also used the collage technique of John Dos Passos whose USA is still a hugely underestimated modernist masterpiece. Since the novel was set in Japan in the near future in the 1990's (at that time), the fillers were all futuristic, like a Japanese student who managed to get a car to run on Diet Coke.
At the centre of the novel was quite literally the erotics of writing. Vladimir the short-story writer was living off the earnings of Olga who worked in a club. In a section that follows the camera of the narrator, we follow him all the way to a sex act on stage. Not knowing that the act involves his wife, Olga. She shouts at him, just like in those many scenes where a home movie ends when a partner turns on the filmmaker and asks him what is he doing? We discover that Olga is working for the Mafia. She is owned. Vladimir tagged along. He is in a manner pimping his wife, and here the metaphor of pimping is critical of the writing process as appropriation or possession of people. The two living in Japan feel alienated. They want to escape. That is the engine of the novel. However, throughout, we get sections that include short stories and essays written by Vladimir. The stories are short and rewritings of folk tales. It was certainly not going to get from A to B quickly, yet the detective novel genre influenced the teleology. We have a character who follows them. He is the watcher. He has tattoos on his eye lids. Two knives that he keeps in his boots - called Mummy and Daddy. The novel was started. But it was beached by Life. Maybe the events in the interlude have over taken it, dated it. However, it is still there, in the consciousness. Olga and Vladimir will have their day. We shall see.